About midnight of the day of the
attack, my friend Gregory and I got on our bikes and wandered downtown.
Everything was EERIE QUIET all over downtown - totally surreal. You
can hear yourself breathing!!! We wandered and zig zaged down the
streets. Cops were on EVERY corner in Manhattan - amongst empty streets.
As we got closer to the former site of WTC - security seemed less important
up to certain parts - to a point. We saw everything from different
points. Saw Mayor Gulliani TWICE! Weird! It varied from
looking like the cover of a cheap science fiction paperback book - to the
antarctic mixed with a (destroyed) New York City - did that make sense?
It's kind of ineffable. The whole city is in a dream state.
It's like 4:30AM and I'm exhausted and my right hand burns and my lungs
hurt. I just got out of a Silkwood-esque shower. Plus I just
peed and it smells really strange - there's something weird in that ash
(note: the next day Gregory called me to tell me his pee had smelled
weird too that night and morning!) This was one of the weirdest
days I've ever experienced in NYC. Here are the photos - I'm too
dazed to explain too much.

See the remains of the tower way in
the distance?

A building destroyed, WTC remains behind
it - all in the distance.

Gregory noticed this billboard - I
love the tag line.

See the snowflakes of ash? There are
human remains in that ash!

This part of the west side of TriBeCa
was without power - total blackness - NEVER seen that in NYC before! While
Greg and I were riding through one spooky, evacuated, pitch black street
- some mysterious weirdo shined a flashlight onto us from high up on a
building as we rode by. The light following us. So creepy. Then we made
our way in the darkness to this ash-covered bus. The only illumination.

Ash covering everything like snow.

OK here is the best shot I could get
while choking on ash of Mayor Gulliani greeting some firemen before he
went through one of the checkpoints to examine the scene. I know I know
he's obscured by a fireman - hey my camera's slow! Considering how Greg
and I were all over the place on our bikes and we saw Gulliani TWICE in
the span of one hour - he was really getting around.

Wrote my name in the dust on one of
the beams inside of this footbridge that crosses the West Side Highway
and leads directly to the World Trade Center. This plexiglass-enclosed
bridge is off-limits now, but we were able to gain full access to Tuesday
night (you can see it far behind many of the news anchors on TV coverage
now).

Hand-made sign put on the door of this
restaurant, obviously right before they shut down.

.These papers were ALL OVER the streets
mixed with the ash. Guess what they are? Yep! Office memos and whatever
from the offices of the many floors of the WTC. Indeed. Some were burned.
It really makes you think twice about slaving day after day in some stupid
office job. I saved two and scanned them below:

This one freaked my roommate Domenic
out when he looked at it. He works (worked) in a restaurant across from
WTC One and works in the delivery to-go department. He says that Joseph
Lesser is one of his regular customers who ordered lunch from them almost
every day. Creepy that this is one of four random ones I picked up.

A burnt book page. It's interesting
how so much of the concrete, steel, glass, drywall and marble was instantly
pulverized into dust - but so much of the paper from the offices is still
intact.

Abandoned fruit stand. There were piles
of dust-covered food and bottles of water everywhere. We also saw many,
many shoes in the streets. Weird. One interesting thing: Greg and I also
saw lots of abandoned baby carriages in the area. A good sign - people
obviously grabbed their toddlers out of the carriages and ran like hell
with them - the only thing you could do.

Make shift help center. At first we
thought the sleeping people were bodies.

These two funny German guys were goofing
around with these weird gas masks they had bought. People had all different
types of gas masks that they had bought from hardware stores.

Looking in the other direction, away
from the glow.

The next day I rode my bike over to
Williamsburg, Brooklyn to get away from everything. These two shots are
from one of the empty lots in Williamsburg - looking at Manhattan where
the towers used to be, as the sun is setting.